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> When designing a product right and towards long term quality, designers decision has more business value than front-end development. A good design badly impl

> When designing a product right and towards long term quality, designers decision has more business value than front-end development. A good design badly implemented leads to a poor product. > You can use design system for years to come and change front-end tech several times in this period. > Todays front-end development is not like in 2008 when we used vanilla JS/Jquery/Ajax, there are tons of libraries and modularity in front-end development process. > The low payment for designers is just tech founders devaluing the design process and the result is less qualified designers competing for what is left on the table (spoiler alert: it’s not too much). Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. If you hold the position that other parts of product development have commoditized with the advent of more libraries, it a strange to claim that design is immune to this change over time. The stance is especially peculiar because you also claim that the value of good design is its ability to be applicable for many years. So, maybe in many domains all the good designs have been explored and consensus arrived at that paying high for a specialist designer is valuable to only handful of teams?

Silhouette 6y ago
Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. It could be, yes. Another possibility is that most founders have so little knowledge of good design and what it can do that most of them don't even consider whether it can be used to their advantage. I suspect there is some truth in both of these theories. Some examples that come to mind immediately are Apple, Tesla and Ubiquiti, all of which have been successful despite entering established markets where huge incumbents had vast resources available to compete. That success came after the newcomers introduced more "designer" hardware products that offered slick user experiences, making the competition look old and clunky by comparison, and giving the newcomers enough of an edge to disrupt the market. Something else that is noticeable about all of those companies is that they have built extremely loyal customer bases, which have endured even when they've had problems with products and despite their relatively high prices. It seems to be accepted wisdom among much of the startup community that a business like Apple is unique and there is no point trying to follow the same strategy because we can't all be Steve Jobs or Jony Ive. Maybe a few more founders should be asking, why not?

Silhouette 6y ago

Or it could be a realization by founders that design skills have commoditized enough that specialist designers do not provide enough incremental value. It could be, yes. Another possibility is that most founders have so little knowledge of good design and what it can do that most of them don't even consider whether it can be used to their advantage. I suspect there is some truth in both of these theories. Some examples that come to mind immediately are Apple, Tesla and Ubiquiti, all of which have been successful despite entering established markets where huge incumbents had vast resources available to compete. That success came after the newcomers introduced more "designer" hardware products that offered slick user experiences, making the competition look old and clunky by comparison, and giving the newcomers enough of an edge to disrupt the market. Something else that is noticeable about all of those companies is that they have built extremely loyal customer bases, which have endured even when they've had problems with products and despite their relatively high prices. It seems to be accepted wisdom among much of the startup community that a business like Apple is unique and there is no point trying to follow the same strategy because we can't all be Steve Jobs or Jony Ive. Maybe a few more founders should be asking, why not?